So close and yet so far for the Wallabies

Ignoring what happened after fulltime in the third Bledisloe Cup match between the Wallabies and All Blacks, it was a pretty good night for the Wallabies.

They may have lost the match but they showed that they do have the potential to compete with the best team in the world.

The All Blacks certainly weren’t on top of their game, but I think the Wallabies deserve a fair amount of credit for creating that situation through pressure.

As usual there were both good and bad elements of play from the Wallabies. Both need highlighting because there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

I mentioned last week that I hoped the Wallabies had seen the pressure the Springboks excerpted on the All Blacks using a very flat attacking structure. They clearly had because the Wallabies came out and duplicated that alignment.

From the first lineout, Bernard Foley received the ball only about five metres short of the gain line.

Outside him Christian Leali’ifano ran an ‘overs’ line angling out behind Tevita Kuridrani who received the ball on a slight ‘unders’ line, angling back at Beauden Barrett.

On this first play Kuridrani got the Wallabies well over the gain line and forced Barrett to make the tackle.

Kuridrani was again outstanding for the Wallabies. I expect we’ll see him continue in this vein on the end of year tour.

Throughout most of the match, the Wallabies kept playing with this flat alignment, regardless of whether the play was run off a pass from the scrum-half or the fly-half.

In this example Foley receives the ball very flat from another lineout. Again Leali’ifano runs an ‘overs’ line, with Foley having Kuridrani and Adam Ashley-Cooper as narrow running options.

This time Foley passed wide to Leali’ifano who was also aligned very flat. Israel Folau and Joe Tomane were both wide and out of the frame here but you can see Malakai Fekitoa and Conrad Smith both focusing on those players outside while Barrett went forward to meet Kuridrani.

Whenever a defender is moving sideways there’s an opportunity back in behind them and Leali’ifano takes advantage of that, stepping inside Fekitoa.

This break from Leali’ifano led to the Wallabies’ first try and he made a very good return to the side.

Of course a flat alignment can become too flat and the Wallabies fell into this trap a number of times. In this example the pass from Leali’ifano hit the All Black defender before it even got to Scott Higginbotham.

In this example Nick Phipps was correctly pulled up for a forward pass.

I thought Phipps had his best game as a Wallaby and I know there were plenty of people questioning the decision to replace him after only 53 minutes. However, if you watch him in the five minutes before he’s replaced it’s very clear that he was finished for the night.

The Wallabies attacked with a very fast tempo and that required Phipps to work really hard to get from ruck to ruck. Once he started walking just short of 50 minutes, the coaches had no choice but to replace him.

Nic White came on and did reasonably well until he fell into the habit of kicking possession away at the wrong time. When players are under pressure they usually revert to what they know best and with White, that’s kicking.

If the new Wallaby coach doesn’t want the ball kicked away at crucial times, White shouldn’t be selected. If he is, then we’ll probably see more kicks handing possession back to the opposition when it should be retained.

One of the issues with playing an up tempo attacking style is that players can get isolated without support because the support players are either too tired to make it to the ruck or they’re thinking too much about getting in position for the next phase of attack.

You’ll recall that in 2013 the Waratahs struggled with losing possession at rucks early in the season, until the players learnt that their first focus had to be on the ruck and committing sufficient numbers to be sure of retaining the ball.

The Wallabies suffered a few too many ruck turnovers in this match for similar reasons. In this first example Michael Hooper is isolated with only Bernard Foley really supporting him. The first pair of yellow boots you can see belong to Higginbotham and he needed to show more urgency to get closer to Hooper so he could receive an offload or get into the ruck early to secure possession.

Instead you’ll see that he’s slow to adjust his width and it’s the All Blacks who are first into the ruck and then Richie McCaw who makes a crucial turnover.

This sort of turnover really robbed the Wallabies of momentum on a few occasions.

Here’s an example showing contrasting efforts from players around the ruck. This was in the lead up to Ashley-Cooper’s try early in the second half.

After a series of strong runs, particularly from Kuridrani, James Slipper hit the ball at pace and carried the ball over the gain line. The two closest forwards were Hooper and Saia Fainga’a coming from the previous ruck.

Folau was in behind Slipper but both these forwards needed to get to Slipper to ensure the All Blacks couldn’t slow the ball down or achieve a turnover.

Fainga’a moved toward Slipper but I think he needed to show more urgency. You can see that Hooper has no interest in helping out in tight – he’s already starting to run across field to get involved in the next phase of attack.

Fortunately both All Black defenders went to ground and Slipper was able to offload to Folau.

Then it was Folau that needed support or the opportunity to keep attacking may have been lost if he got isolated.

With Hooper ignoring what should have been his number one priority and Fainga’a not being urgent enough it was Slipper that got off the deck and chased after Folau.

If not for the fantastic double effort of Slipper, Whitelock would have latched on to the ball here before any other Wallaby arrived and the opportunity would have been lost despite really good lead up work. Fortunately Slipper made a good cleanout and on the next phase Ashley-Cooper scored.

I thought Slipper was outstanding in this match. He is without doubt the best prop in Australia and must be one of the first players picked in the team. It’s just a pity he has to be replaced and can’t be an eighty-minute player.

Scott Fardy also had a fantastic match. He made a number of crucial ruck turnovers and this one in the tenth minute came at a time when the Wallabies were under enormous pressure near their own line.

It’s been great to see how Fardy’s returned to the form of last season.

One area the Wallabies still need to work on is their defence and more importantly their decision making and communication between each other.

Obviously they got caught short of numbers at the end of the match and Foley made a bad miss on Fekitoa to let in the match winning try but the structural issues in defence were evident throughout the match.

When Dan Coles scored his try in the first half the Wallabies had equal numbers on the short side but they were a little narrow in their alignment. Sam Carter and Foley had both aligned too far inside their man. Carter should have aligned on Barrett and Foley on Coles.

In the image above you can see Carter has recognised that he needs to push out and has started adjusting but Foley made a poor decision to come out of the line and ‘jam in’ on Barrett. He needed to trust Carter to get across and take Barrett. Instead a simple pass from Barrett put Coles into the hole outside Foley.

Then Phipps compounded the problem by over committing outside and was embarrassed by Coles stepping inside him to score untouched.

Here’s another example with Carter making the mistake this time. Hooper was tracking Owen Franks, Rob Simmons was lined up on Brodie Retallick and Carter needed to focus on Wyatt Crockett.

However, Carter ‘jams in’ on Retallick so that two players take him leaving Crockett in space.

Fortunately Crockett dropped the ball but these defensive errors just shouldn’t be made by any player who has made it to this level.

The Wallabies’ kicking was much improved in this match, both in terms of execution and decision making. It wasn’t until the 48th minute that they started to fall back into bad habits with Foley trying a poorly thought out (and poorly executed) grubber kick before Folau followed up with his own in the 52nd minute.

Both of White’s box kicks were negative for the Wallabies. His first in the 74th minute was returned with interest by the All Blacks and the Wallabies received the ball about 15 metres short of where the box kick was made. The second came in the 79th minute and was a major blunder that gave the All Blacks the possession they needed to have a chance at winning the match.

Just a few minutes earlier I was feeling reasonably confident that the Wallabies could hold on but as soon as the All Blacks were gifted possession by White, there was almost a sense of inevitability about them scoring to win the match.

I thought Foley’s kick in the 55th minute was equally as bad. The Wallabies had the All Blacks defence at sixes and sevens and had extra numbers and space on the left side of the field. Foley had Higginbotham, Leali’ifano, Kuridrani, Ashley-Cooper and two tight five forwards outside him in support.

Instead of using these support players, he chose to attempt a wide kick to Ashley-Cooper. It was an option as Ashley-Cooper was unmarked but simply passing the ball through the hands would have left Ashley-Cooper in the same space as if the ball had reached him from the kick.

Yes, the execution was poor but I think the decision making was even worse. The image above doesn’t show the threat that Piutau posed in behind the line that made it such a poor decision but the one below does.

Even if the kick had been perfectly executed it’s likely that Piutau would have been in position to contest the catch or to tackle Ashley-Cooper as he landed. It was a golden opportunity to extend the Wallabies lead that ended up being another moment not worthy of a player at this level.

Finally, a quick look at the scrum contest. Craig Joubert penalised James Slipper twice early in the match for causing the scrum to collapse. I know a number of people questioned the decisions and there was one journalist in the press box who was absolutely adamant it was Owen Franks who had gone to ground and should have been the one penalised.

The following image shows that it was clearly Franks going to ground first.

But who goes to ground first is irrelevant. What matters is why Franks went to ground and that was simply down to Slipper hinging. You can see in the image below that as Franks tried to drive forward Slipper’s hips were popping up as he couldn’t take the pressure.

If Slipper had held his body shape with his shoulders above or level with his hips, Franks would have had something to push on. But with no resistance against him, Franks followed Slipper’s shoulders down.

This first penalty was called by the assistant referee, but Joubert made the call for the second penalty himself for the same offence. Both calls were correct.

Slipper then made some adjustments and scrummaged well during the rest of the match but when you look at the poor angle of Fardy behind him in these images Slipper’s job was made much harder than it should be.

It amazes me that a lack of coordinated work in the scrum continues to be an issue.